Questions to Answer

What questions do we want answered by market research - and how will we incorporate the feedback we get back into the development cycle?

Is there a budget for market research?

Is there a simple open-source tool for developing surveys to be posted and aggregating the answers?

Could we get companies to donate free swag (tee-shirts, netbooks, mp3 players, messenger bags, etc.) to provide as an incentive for completing surveys?

It would be awesome to have a Master List of conferences / Events where a laptop could be set up for on-site surveys. (Linuxcon, Linuxworld, Linuxwhatever, RH Summit, Linux Symposium, etc.)

Does Red Hat have any research that could legally be shared with Fedora (maybe a small group of people, or have one person be a gateway - ie: The Gateway person collects questions, and then asks RH market research folks (are there any??) if they can provide answers).

Does anyone have any contacts at any major PC / Server vendors (the usual suspects - Dell, HP, IBM, Sun, and the like) that would be a good starting point to see if they would participate in surveys about shipments? We would need a good blurb about why it would be important to participate and what they would get out of it (ie, they are good community participants, it helps them develop a broader market, they get access and input to free research, etc.)

Activities in the same spectrum - Related to Market Research

Benchmarking / ensuring the community is recognizing that someone is taking notice of market research results and doing something with it. ie: "Based on user feedback, Fedora 13 has developed / improved 90% of requested features in the following areas...."

Educating Fedora/Other distro developers on (a) what market research is and (b) how to use it or incorporate it into their planning / development. This could be a class, presentation given at conferences, guide, or <insert clever idea here>.

Develop a weekly/bi-weekly/monthly/quarterly newsletter dedicated to highlighting other market research resources that are available. (This information could also be tracked / disseminated / portal-ized on Fedora_Insight. This includes things like:

Reports done by the Linux Foundation

Reports done by anyone else that are free

Reports that aren't free but have really nice press releases that give out tidbits of information that could be useful.

Research / Survey information done by Fedora project marketing. :)

Proposed Market Research Categories / Projects / Surveys

Overview

Fedora-Centric Market Research

Fedora - Competitive Analysis Market Research

Community-Shared Market Research

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